New Mexico has a complex gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by Congress in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Amerindian casino craze. Politics assured that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate an accord with New Mexico Indian bands. When the task force came to an accord with 2 big local bands a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Native gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the contract with the Amerindian bands, anti-wagering forces were able to hold the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the compact, thereby denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It required the CNA, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full compact amongst the State of New Mexico and its Native tribes. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes American Indian casino Bingo.
The not for profit Bingo business has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game operators brought in only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have grown steadily since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All kinds of providers try for a piece of the pie. With hope, the politicos are through batting around gambling as a hot button matter like they did in the 1990’s. That’s most likely hopeful thinking.
This entry was posted on July 15, 2020, 3:25 am and is filed under Bingo. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.